


Therapy Boys

by AHS



Category: Actor RPF, Queer as Folk (US) RPF
Genre: M/M, alternating pov, my first boy smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-03
Updated: 2007-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:16:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHS/pseuds/AHS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in 2006, a year post-filming.  On opposite sides of the country, Gale and Randy are missing each other and needing some professional counsel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One Year's Withdrawal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

_2006\. Los Angeles, CA. Office of Dr. Thomas Aberman. Gale Harold POV._

“Everybody has a college I-was-so-drunk-I-let-this-guy-blow-me story.”

“So tell me your story, Gale.”

“I was so drunk I let this guy blow me.”

Well, that was pretty much the gist. But Dr. Aberman just sat and stared, waiting for me to spill my guts more in depth. It was only my third session with him, but I’d learned that trick. Overall, though, he didn’t pull out many of the psychiatrist clichés… the leaning forward, the steepling the fingers, the “how does that make you feel?”… I hadn’t decided yet if that made me like him more or trust him less.

“I was 20 and stupid. It was a drunk ass dare. One of my roommate’s friends. The three of us hanging out at the dorm one night. Whole bottle of tequila. Supposed to be funny, I guess.”

“Was it?”

I’d been telling the story while looking, unfocused, in the vicinity of my knees. But now I raised my head to face my doctor… late 50’s, with salt and pepper hair, a round face, and a fondness for almost Cosby-style sweaters. It was a little weird confessing some of the things I was to this man who could be my father or an uncle, but so far he hadn’t blinked.

“I was so smashed, I barely remember the blow job. But I guess I enjoyed it. My roommate decided I enjoyed it a little too much. He was the one who dared us, see, and then he couldn’t move out fast enough. Wrangled a new housing assignment in less than a week, because he didn’t want to room with a ‘ _fag_ ’.”

Dr. Aberman leaned forward in his chair, touching his fingertips together under his chin. “How did that make you feel?”

I rolled my eyes slightly but also was relaxed by the comfort to be found in cliché. This was what I had come in expecting, and now I knew where I was. Yeah, I could trust him now.

“Pissed me off. But I didn’t have any kind of sexual identity crisis. I just swore to stay away from tequila from then on. Fucked a hot girl from my European Lit class and I was all good. Nothing like that ever happened again… you know, with a guy… and I honestly never gave it much thought. Until QAF came along.”

“Did that experience give you pause in accepting the role?”

“Just for a moment.” I always said I never hesitated, but that was only almost true. “For that moment, I pictured the asshole former roommate flipping channels on his TV, landing on me fucking some guy, and just saying, ‘I knew it.’ But then I thought, fuck him. Fuck what anybody thinks. It’s a job. Might even be a good job. It’s well-written, and they want you, and how often do either of those things happen? Maybe I thought it was a way to prove something to myself…”

I trailed off. I could feel Dr. Aberman staring, waiting for me to explain that statement, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not this session, anyway. Instead, I finally let my thoughts take the path it seemed they always wanted to go. To _him_.

“Ten, eleven years of my life went by, and I _never_ thought that guy might have been right… until I met Randy.”

*********

 _New York City. Office of Dr. Jocelyn Matthews. Randy Harrison POV._

“What was the dream this time, Randy?”

“Simon and I were having a picnic in Central Park and pointing out pictures in the clouds. Not that that’s something we do, but whatever.” Seriously, what the fuck. That’s not even gay. That’s like cartoon gay. “The thing is, every cloud looked like Gale. Don’t even ask me how. I kept waiting for Simon to realize it, too, and get upset, but he just kept saying ‘a puppy,’ ‘a sombrero’… Meanwhile, I reach up to the sky and pull Gale down to be with me. Simon, everything else, disappears, and it’s just me and Gale. And he’s real. But I didn’t even get a chance to kiss him before I woke up. I just kept staring at his lips. Staring and touching. Everybody talks about my lips, you know, but Gale’s are… perfect. Really kissably full. Soft and strong. And always this deep pink, even when we’d been outside shooting for hours and it was 150 degrees below zero and my lips were blue. My lips… I like them, but sometimes I think they’re a little too… borderline _The Joker_ …”

“Randy.” Dr. Matthews… my therapist of the past year, who was only a few years older than me, and who reminded me a little of Makyla, actually… smiled at me. Time to rein me in. “What do you think the dream means?”

I sighed and propped my feet up on the armrest. I’m sure most of her patients chose to sit in the chair, but they just didn’t know how to take advantage of therapy. I stretched out melodramatically on the couch like the queen I knew I could sometimes be.

“Probably the same as all the other dreams. The dreams I’ve been having, at least twice a week, since the show ended a year ago. Different settings, different little details, doesn’t matter. I can’t get Gale out of my head. Which is hardly new, but it’s finally starting to drive me crazy. I just want to know what I’m expecting… Shit, I’m not expecting anything. I never have from him.”

Dr. Matthews did that staring thing, her face silently asking me, “ _Are you sure_?” She never had to wait very long for me to start talking, and this was no exception.

“Well, that would be foolish, wouldn’t it? He’s straight… basically. Although, second year of the show, when we got really baked and he told me about that guy in college sucking him off…”

Dr. Matthews nodded. She’d heard that story before.

“I almost went wild with hope. Then I got pissed at myself, and him. Stopped talking to him, any more than I had to for work, for… a couple of months. God, I hated that time. I hated that I made him feel he couldn’t just put an arm around me anymore. Hated not hanging out in each other’s dressing rooms, doing nothing. Hated the silences in the makeup chairs, that the hair and makeup people tried too hard to fill for us. It was so… sad.”

“What made you put an end to the silent treatment?”

“I missed him too much. And I knew it wasn’t fair, what I was doing. I just decided, okay, if you want Gale in your life, you have to give up. Give up hoping he’s secretly gay. Certainly give up hoping, yes he’s straight, but _you’re_ the one man he could want to be with. Christ, I know it doesn’t work like that.”

“You can’t say a person would never feel a certain way. Especially someone as… unusual as Gale?”

This was the frustrating thing about Dr. Matthews… or Jocelyn, as she actually liked patients to call her. She was young and cool, with her own style of therapy. Not that she wasn’t professional, but sometimes it was more like talking to a girlfriend (the universe wearing an annoyingly ironic smile at her resemblance to _Daphne_ ). Why was she encouraging my delusions?

“People are unpredictable,” she continued, “and feelings don’t always follow set patterns or psychiatric guidelines. For instance, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that one day you might find yourself attracted to a woman.”

If I hadn’t been used to her nutty theories after a year, I would have left at that. Instead, I just scoffed. “Yes, _Jocelyn_ , it is out of the realm. It can’t get any more _out_.”

“Relax, Randy. I’m not trying to suggest that you’re not gay. I’d be a piss poor judge of people if I did. I’m just saying, sexuality is a fluid construct, and if we’re drawn first to the heart and soul and mind, we can end up attracted to people we never would have thought.”

“Except that I could never be attracted to a woman.”

“Need I bring up J.T. LeRoy?”

Ouch. I was still recovering from the recent reveal that my favorite author/idol/mystery crush… and possibly the one man, based only on the brilliance of his books and the gorgeous tragedy of his supposed gay hustling life, who I would be tempted to leave both Gale _and_ Simon for… was in fact… some _woman_.

“That doesn’t count,” I said bitterly. “I was always imagining LeRoy as a man, wasn’t I?”

“And how did you imagine him?”

I could see the slight smile she tried to hide at the predictability of my mind. I’ll admit, my description sounded a little like Gale.

*********

“What is it that’s truly troubling you, Gale?”

My first session with Dr. Aberman, two weeks before, had ostensibly been about my breakup with Kim. I mean, it had been difficult, and I did miss her. But it didn’t compare to the way I’d missed Randy for the past year, and that made me more sure I’d done the right thing in ending the relationship. Anyway, halfway through, it became clear who I was really there to talk about. I remembered describing to the doctor my last conversation with him. When, about two months after QAF wrapped, my phone rang way too early one morning…

*~*

 _“*cough*… Hello?”_

 _“Is America’s Funniest Home Videos still on the air?”_

 _“Randy? What the-?”_

 _“Yeah, it’s me. Hi, Gale… So is it?”_

 _“Uh, I think so? Maybe? Feels like one of those shows that just won’t die… Why the hell are you calling me at six a.m. to ask me that?”_

 _“Because I got this new digital camera that takes video and I was taping the cats, and Aggie did the funniest thing… Sorry, did I wake you? I forgot it’s three hours earlier where you are.”_

 _“S’okay, *yawn*… What did Aggie do?”_

 _“I can’t even describe it. It was like she… Maybe I should just email you the clip. Then you can tell me if I should send it in. Do you think I’m famous enough that they wouldn’t want to enter me with the regular people?”_

 _“Hmm. That could be a problem, Superstar. But you could always just submit under Simon’s name.”_

 _*Silence*… “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Listen, I’ve got to go. Sorry again. Tell Kim hi. Hope I didn’t wake her, too.”_

 _“Wait, Rand!”_

 _“Yeah?”_

 _“We… We should talk more often.”_

 _“Yeah. We should.”_

*~*

“That was the first time you’d spoken in the two months since you’d ceased working together?”

“Yep.”

“And you haven’t spoken again since? How long ago was this?”

“Almost ten months.”

“My only question now is, why?”

I sighed almost violently. “I don’t know. For my part, it’s easier not to call him, not to talk to him. As much as it kills me, missing him like this, somehow it still seems easier. And I guess I kept expecting him to call me. I mean, especially after that. Calling me to tell me his cat did something cute and ask me if some dumb show I’ve never even seen is still on the air? That’s so random. And so… Randy. And it was so something he would have done before, back in Toronto. We called each other for stupider things than that all the time back then. But this time… he got kind of distant before he hung up. No, I lied. I didn’t expect him to call me. When we said we should talk more often, I pretty much knew we wouldn’t.”

Dr. Aberman looked like he was debating something in his head. Whether or not to say something that was fighting to leap its way off the tip of his tongue.

“Gale, I’m going to do something I don’t often do. I don’t find it my place to give advice, especially when I haven’t been working with a patient for very long. I prefer to simply listen, guide with gentle questioning, and allow the patient to reach their own conclusions about what course of action to take, if any, in their life. But there is something I feel I must suggest, in your case, if I hope to see you make any progress at all.”

I was curious, and fucking terrified. “Okay. What’s that?”

“Go find Randy Harrison. See him. Talk to him, in person. I think it might do you both a lot of good.”

*********

“You know, I’ve seen _Queer As Folk_. Quite a few episodes.”

I knew. I suspected there was a fangirl inside Dr. Matthews dying to get out, yet I gave her credit for keeping it covered with (mostly) detached, doctorly manner.

“Do you remember,” she went on, “something Justin said to the Michael character once? About how Michael was living his life in limbo waiting for Brian to finish jerking him off? Maybe that’s kind of the case with you and Gale.”

“Trust me, I would remember if Gale had ever started jerking me off. He never did.” Sadly.

“Maybe not. But you simulated such acts, and others much more intimate, countless times, over years. You became very familiar with each other’s bodies, yet were never able to truly share the sexual experience your characters did. You had orgasms together, basically, but without really getting each other there. Acted or not, that’s a highly personal thing. Add to that the close bond you formed outside of work and the lack of contact you’ve had since the show ended, and you’re bound to feel there’s something… unfinished between you.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, hoping she didn’t notice. Damn it. Why did she have to be so accurate in her description? “Yeah, you could say that,” I agreed, my voice strained. “But what can I do about it?”

“I think you should see him,” she grinned. “I think you should tell Gale some of what you’ve told me.”

*********

“See Randy? Are you serious? Is this, like, a prescription?”

“If that makes you feel better.” Dr. Aberman pulled out his prescription pad and started scribbling. Then he pulled off the top sheet and handed it to me.

I read it out loud. “Take one… plum?”

“Plane,” he calmly corrected.

Wow, doctors’ handwriting really did suck. “Take one plane to go see Randy Harrison as soon as passably… oh, _possible_. Do not talk on an antsy… _empty_ stomach. Call me in the… morning.” This guy was not only instructing me to go see Randy, but apparently also to have dinner with him. What a weirdo. “I guess I have to do what this says, huh?”

The doc smiled. “If that makes you feel better.”

I had a feeling it just might.

*********

“See Gale? Tell him the stuff I tell you? You’re the doctor. You’re not supposed to be the crazy one.”

“It’s not crazy. Look, break it down to this… He’s your friend. He was your best friend, and you haven’t seen him or talked to him properly in a year. Don’t you want to see him?”

“Of course I do.” My heart felt so full in my chest I could hardly breathe at the prospect.

“Well then?”

Simon was going to be out of town again this weekend. That made me feel guiltier, but it just made sense to not invite a Simon-Gale showdown. They’d never quite taken to each other. But I could… I could have Gale standing in front of me in a few days. Maybe even touch him, just a little, outside of a dream. That’s if he even wanted to come.

“Okay. I’ll call him.”

*********

 _(That night… before they could change their minds…)_

“Hello?”

“Randy. It’s me, Gale.”

“No _shit_.”

“Excuse me?”

“Can’t believe…”

“Randy?”

“I was just about to call you.”

“Sure you were. One of your cats finally do something funny again?”

“No, I’m serious, Gale. My hand was literally reaching for the phone, I swear.”

“Wow… But, uh, I won. I called first, so I get to say what I called for first.”

“What if we both called for the same reason?”

“Fine, we’ll say our reasons at the same time.”

“Go.”

“I’m thinking of coming up…”

“… to New York City…”

“… and I wanted to see you…”

“… and talk to you…”

“… because it’s been too…”

“… _damn long_ … Exactly.”

“Okay, that was impressive. But don’t sound so smug, asshole. What would you have done if I’d invited you to L.A.?”

“I’d think that was sweet but kind of stupid, since I hate L.A. and you like New York. But if it was the only way to see you, I’d have gone.”

“Lucky for you, I’m in a mood for the Carnegie Deli.”

“Good. And don’t book a hotel, okay? You’re staying here.”

“You don’t even know when I’m coming.”

“Whenever, you’re staying here. But I’m hoping this weekend. Simon’s going out of town, so it’ll just be us and a lot of uninterrupted catching up.”

“Simon. Right… Sorry I‘ll miss him.”

“Uh huh. What about Kim? Will she be, uh, coming with you?”

“No, we broke up.”

“What? You…?”

“Hey, Randy, I’ve got to go. I’ll call back with my flight times and all that, okay? So… bye.”

“Wait, Gale!”

“Yeah?”

“I’m… I’m really excited about seeing you.”

“Yeah. Me too, Rand.”


	2. Filling The Prescriptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gale and Randy are reunited and start talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

_Randy’s POV. That same night._

“Dr. Matthews? Jocelyn… It’s Randy Harrison.”

“Randy, you never call me at home. Something big happened, huh? Did you call Gale?”

“I was going to. But, you won’t believe it. He called me first.”

“That’s great! What did he say?”

“He’s coming here. This weekend, I think. God, it’s happening…”

“I’m very excited for you, Randy. At the least, the two of you need to talk again.”

What did she mean _‘at the least’_? “But I don’t know about this. He told me something else. He and Kim broke up.”

“I see… That is interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Just… the timing. Do you know who broke up with whom?”

“He didn’t say. He sounded okay, though. He sounded… good.”

“So, were you just calling to tell me the news, or…?”

“I’m not sure what to do about Simon. Since he’ll be away on his business thing anyway, do I just keep Gale’s visit a secret? Or do I tell him and deal with the jealousy? You know how crazy he gets over Gale.”

She got her stern voice on. “Is it crazy for him to be jealous of Gale?”

Point taken. “Maybe not, if he would accuse _me_ of something, but he doesn’t. He accuses Gale.”

“Of what?”

“Everything from being secretly gay and in love with me, to being some kind of manwhore… the straight version of Brian… who’s slept with all the women and now has no choice but to start with the men, me first.”

“And is it the untruth of Simon’s accusations that bothers you, or that part of you wishes they were true?”

Silence from me.

“Well,” she finally went on, “something to ruminate on. I can’t tell you what to tell Simon or not, only you can…”

“I have to tell him. It’s stupid to hide or lie over something as innocent as an old friend coming to visit.”

Silence from Dr. Matthews, then…

“I’ll see you in my office next week, Randy. Give my best to Gale.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to tell him about you.”

She laughed. We hung up. I stayed awake for hours, panicking. Until I fell asleep and had possibly my most vivid Gale sex dream to date. I never knew how I managed to avoid moaning his name in my sleep, but I’m guessing if I did, Simon wouldn’t wake me up quite the way he does. I always feel guilty when a dream about Gale turns into sex with Simon, but I’m not sure if it’s more guilt on Simon’s behalf… for thinking about Gale like that, with this man I’m committed to sharing my bed… or, bizarrely, on Gale’s behalf… that my erection, meant for Gale, is basically property of Simon, to do with as he pleases. *Sigh*… I am such a freak.

Gale’s a freak, too. Just a few days and he’ll be here.

**********

 _Four days later. LaGuardia Airport, NYC._

Gale had offered to just take a cab to the apartment himself, but I decided to risk the possibility of QAF fans in baggage claim and pick him up. While I would have preferred to reunite with him in private, that in itself was reason enough to make sure we were in a public place. After about ten minutes of craning my neck, I could see him walking towards me. The noise, the crowds, everything I hated… He cut through all that. He hadn’t seen me yet, and the moment he did, he got this goofy smile that took me over so completely, we could have been the only ones there. We each struggled past the people in our way, pushing and excusing, until we were right there, in front of each other.

“Hey stranger,” he said.

“Hey.” I was too busy drinking in how good he looked to say anything more scintillating. His hair was just a little bit shorter and lighter than when the show ended, and to make up the difference he had grown the slightest shading of beard. It was sexy as hell. Went nicely, too, with the dark sunglasses he had on. What an outsider might take for Hollywood style, I understood to be his shyness… that he wore them, both to not be recognized and to not have to look people in the eye. Still, I teased him.

“Don’t you know the sunglasses just make people stare at you harder trying to figure out who the big important celebrity is?”

“Well, let them all be disappointed.” He took the glasses off and I swallowed a gasp, feeling so lucky that he has no problem looking into _my_ eyes. His should have been tired and bleary from the long flight, but they were just beautiful. I couldn’t believe it had been a year since I’d witnessed that magical, ever-changing hazel. Gale’s mood ring eyes, I’d called them.

Before I could deduce the color of his current mood, I found myself enveloped… in his arms and his smell, and I could feel the roughness of facial hair tickling my temple. I squeezed him harder and he did the same to me.

“Think it’d cause a scene if I picked you up and spun you around?” Gale breathed in my ear.

“It would be worth it,” I whispered back.

He didn’t spin me, but he did hug me to his full height, lifting me up a little. And, I may have imagined it, but I think he smelled my hair.

“I fucking missed you, Rand.”

“I know… I missed you, too.”

“So why did it take us a year to do this?” he asked, setting me back down. “And why have we hardly talked to each other?”

“I don’t know. I called you once. You called me once. We both suck.”

“Yeah, we do. But at least my call got me here.”

Finally noticing that he’d gotten his bag already, I looped my arm through his. I didn’t even point out that I’d been two seconds from making the same call to him. However it happened, I was just glad to be with him. “You rock, Gale. C’mon, let‘s get out of this madhouse.”

As we walked out, leaning on each other, I noticed an older woman watching us. She looked pointedly at Gale, smiled and winked, then went along her merry way.

“Friend of yours?”

“She sat next to me on the plane. She was a fan of the show… It was okay,” he said, laughing softly at my fearful-of-being-sat-next-to-a-crazy-QAF-fan expression. “Really. She’s obsessed with _Michael & Ben_. She just thought we were nice.”

“Nice?” I was, irrationally, almost insulted. No offense to Hal and Bobby, but how could you be more into them than Gale and me?

“Cheer up. She seemed to like us more once I told her I was coming here to see you.”

I stopped, grabbing his arm. “Gale, you didn’t… Did you?”

He just smiled. “No, I didn’t… She guessed all on her own.”

*****

I would have thought we’d get the small talk out of the way in the cab, but we didn’t. He put an arm around my shoulder, I slipped both of mine inside his coat and around his waist, and I rested my head in his neck. We just sat like that the whole way. Traffic was a bitch, and for once I was glad for it. For that, and for the fact that Gale and I seemed not to have lost our ridiculous level of comfort with each other… with each other’s bodies, in each other’s space. We’d always had that, and even when things got… _hard_ … from time to time, something about us was just so beautifully easy. And so we sat, and breathed, and tried to absorb a missing year of each other.

“Oh… we’re here,” I noticed, almost reluctantly, when the cab finally pulled to a stop in front of my building.

I remember vaguely batting Gale’s hand away when he tried to pay the driver, and me doing it instead (“My town, my treat”), but then my mind blurs a bit in my excitement. I don’t remember getting out of the car, the walk inside, or the elevator to my floor. I do, however, remember opening the door to my apartment, Gale going in, and me desperately wanting to say, “Welcome home.”

I didn’t. But… shit. I knew I was in trouble.

**********

 _Randy’s apartment. Gale’s POV._

I felt at home right off the bat… mostly. Probably because the apartment was made up of him… his likes, his memories, his life. Everything precious to me. It even smelled like Randy. Small things here and there… a tacky piece of art Randy would never own, some writing award plaque, or a picture frame with the smiling happy couple inside… scratched at my skin and my sanity like loose hairs under your collar after a haircut. Reminding me that Simon wasn’t gone, only away.

“Real nice place, Rand.”

“Thanks. Here, let me take your bag and show you your room.” He hauled my duffel onto his shoulder and walked past the kitchen into a little hall. I followed.

“I get a room? I kind of figured I’d be riding the couch.”

“No, there’s a spare room. Although, guests aren’t exactly common occurrence, so I’ve been using it as more of a mini-library.”

Turning into a room and switching on the light, I saw what he meant. It was a beautiful bedroom with pale blue paint, a large, comfortable looking bed I tossed my coat on, and full bookcases lining all four walls. There were still books left over, and they were stacked neatly in piles.

I laughed. “You’ve read all of these, haven’t you?”

“Most of them. Not all.” He gave my doubting look a shrug. “Some of them are Simon’s.”

I knew I should be a good friend and ask about Simon, ask how they were doing, but I just couldn’t manage it. Instead, I let Randy finish giving me the tour of the place, only really taking note of which door was the bathroom, then made my way to the living area and collapsed on the sofa.

“You want something to drink?” he called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, thanks.”

He didn’t bother asking what, bringing out two open, frosty cold bottles of beer. Believe it or not, I don’t drink beer that much, but when I’m really thirsty and the beer’s really cold, there’s nothing better, and Randy knew that. I took a long gulp and watched his smile dance at my “aaahh” of refreshment.

“So… what have you been up to?” He hopped up on the arm of the couch, facing me.

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing really.”

Randy sounded a little sad when he said it. I started talking about the acting I’d been doing the past year and he brightened instantly. Indie film here and there. A couple episodes of _The Unit_ that would be airing soon. Knock on wood, the possibility of a new series. He’s always so damn proud of me, whether the project is shit or gold. He clinked his bottle to mine and said he couldn’t wait to see it all. Then he followed with, of course, how nothing in TV or film could compare to the theater… only half joking.

“I did hear about _Equus_ … Wow. I’m, uh… sorry I didn’t get to see it.” I know I could have made an effort to go, but I was a coward on that, too. Randy on stage… in a very intense role… naked… sans cocksock, ladies and gentleman… and… I was not ready to be jealous of a horse.

He talked about the play so passionately, I felt guiltier for not having gone. Creatively speaking, Randy could be hard to please, and I just loved the way he lit up and hummed with energy and babbled so intelligently about work that really excited him. He said he might be doing _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ next. I said I’d have to make sure I caught a show of that, just to see him kiss a girl. He laughed and kicked me lightly.

I wondered if I would be jealous of the girl.

“Have you seen anyone else from the cast?”

I should have thought about my answer to this. But I started listing name after name, when I saw them, what we talked about. It wasn’t like I was hanging out with everybody all the time, but I’d seen nearly all of them at least once. Those living in L.A., a little more. Michelle, we’d have lunch now and then. Hal, some, when he wanted to try out a new standup bit on me. Scotty, a few times. Too late, I noticed how Randy’s face had fallen. “What about you?”

“Not… really. Sharon came to see _Equus_ once, and I email with Peter pretty often, but…” He let that sentence drop, and came at me with what he really wanted to know. “Why have you been talking to and getting together with everybody but me?”

Fuck. I opened my mouth to say something, but it would have been bullshit, and I don’t bullshit Randy. So I closed it again.

“Well?”

His voice wasn’t accusing, but soft, and cracked with hurt… which is much worse. _Fuck._ Did I even know the answer? I was working on knowing the answer. Hell, I knew well enough. Isn’t that why I‘d gotten on the damn plane?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “And I want to talk about that, Rand. I really do. I have a feeling we’re going to end up talking about it a lot. But not right now, okay?”

He blinked at me. “Then when, Gale?”

I took my last sip of beer and forced myself to speak with confidence. “Tonight. Tonight, we’ve got nothing but time. But right now I am fucking starving! Puny bag of pretzels and half a disgusting sandwich on the plane has not cut it.” Besides, I thought, my shrink prescribed that we eat.

Randy took a minute, looking at me. I think he saw honesty in my eyes, that I meant it when I said we would talk. And then he loosened, and smiled.

“Fine. I guess I do have to feed my guest.” He got up and found the phone book, flipping it open to a billion take-out restaurants. “What do you want?”

**********

 _Randy’s POV_

I talked Gale into Chinese, pointing out how it shows up at your door faster than any other kind of take-out. Within twenty minutes, we were eating. Within forty-five, we were sprawled out on my carpet, fat and happy, opening our fortune cookies.

“What are you giggling at?”

“What?” I startled at his voice.

“Your fortune that funny?”

“No.”

“Naughty? You look a little pink, too.”

I just couldn’t help it. Anytime I opened a fortune cookie, I heard the words “up you” in my head… accompanied by thoughts of Gale‘s lap. Damn you, Justin.

“No, it’s lovely, actually… _Art is the accomplice of love_.”

“That’s deep, Rand. Not what I’d call a fortune, but deep. Good one for you.”

“What does yours say?”

He pulled out the little strip and read to himself. “Motherfucker.”

“It says that?” I laughed and he chucked a wonton at me.

“That would be better than this… _Digital circuits are made from analog parts_ … What the fuck is that?”

“What’s wrong with it? You like circuits and… parts… right?”

“Just because I’m mechanically inclined doesn’t mean I think that’s a cool fortune. I want _‘You will go on a journey, happy long time’_ or some shit like that. Something that at least tries to tell the future.”

“I’ll call the China Dragon and lodge a complaint.”

“Nah, s’okay. I went on my journey today, so…”

I was just about to bring up the “happy long time” and make him finally tell me how long he was staying, when he jumped up and asked me for a lighter. I should have known he was long overdue for a smoke break. He offered to go outside, but I told him he could smoke out the window and I’d join him. Gale wrestled with the window, winning out and blasting us both with the cold air. I tossed him my pack of cigarettes, but again I should have known. He pulled a joint out of, I swear, the waistband of his jeans, where airport security apparently did not search. I sparked us up.

We smoked and talked, through chattering teeth, about new music we liked, politicians we didn’t, everything and nothing. It was like old times in the Toronto cold, warming myself with Gale’s company and conversation between scenes. He offered his condolences regarding JT LeRoy, partly teasing, but still meaning it.

The cats ventured out at last to welcome the guest. They always hide at first (well, Ella hides, Aggie sizes you up), but suddenly they were presenting themselves to Gale’s legs and rubbing shamelessly, begging for his love. I had to admire the way they just went for it. He reached down and stroked their fur for a minute, then informed me he was going to take a piss. I chuckled and quickly cleaned up, throwing the empty food containers away. I pulled out a bottle of wine, had second thoughts… then third, and got out glasses, too. I took wine and glasses to the coffee table, sat and poured. Then he walked out, and he’d kicked off his shoes, and I had to take a drink. Because Gale’s sexiness doubles when he is barefoot.

“So what made you call?” I asked, as he sat cross-legged on the couch beside me.

“I missed you,” he said simply, taking a glass.

“That’s it?” Though I know, at least to me, that was a lot.

“It’s been a fucking year, Rand. The _America’s Funny Videos_ call doesn’t count. What the fuck was that, anyway?”

“I don’t know. It was an impulse. I was alone that morning, Aggie had her little moment, and I thought, ‘Who’s willing to listen to me go on about silly, stupid shit?’ I thought of you.” Or maybe it was because of the dream I’d just woken up from… but I didn’t say that.

“Well then, thank you, Aggie,” he directed to the cat, “for giving Randy something to say to me.” Aggie meowed in acknowledgment, and Gale redirected to me. “Funny thing, though. That clip you sent me was dated a week before you called.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. “Okay, asshole. Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice. I don’t know why the lame excuse, except I thought it would make you laugh.”

“Why did you get all weird and hang up when I mentioned Simon?”

“What? I didn’t. I probably just had something to do.”

“Sure.” He didn’t seem to believe me, but he let it go. “Speaking of, when’s Simon coming back? I should probably be gone before then.”

“Then there’s no rush,” I said, slightly mumbled.

“What does that mean?” Gale tugged my hand away from my mouth, where my thumbnail had taken up nervous residence between my front teeth.

“It means Simon’s not coming back. We, uh… we broke up.”

**********

 _Gale’s POV_

I almost choked on my wine but tried to pass it off as a cough. I felt Randy‘s hand pat my back. “You broke up?” My eyes scanned the room, still seeing the touches of Simon.

Randy followed my eyes, understanding. “I know, right? But it just happened.”

He reached past me to turn over a picture of them that sat on the end table. I made myself concentrate on his words, not his warmth pressed close, and watch his hands, not his mouth right in front of me.

“We’ve had a few breakups before. Several, actually,” he admitted. “But it felt different this time.”

“How?”

“Felt like… there was nothing else to be done. It’s finished.”

“And you’re okay with that?” I searched the blue staring back at me. He was sad, but not depressed like I might have thought.

“Not completely. But I was less okay the way things were.”

I slid a hand onto the back of his neck, squeezing gently the warm and the tense. I brought his head down to my shoulder, and we leaned back into the sofa cushions.

“What the fuck happened, Rand? You were together… years.” Didn’t I know it.

“And it was good. But there were problems that didn’t go away, and it just all came to a head.”

“When?” I had a suspicion. I hoped I was wrong.

“Monday… night.”

I wasn’t wrong. “After I called you? Fuck. He got pissed because you told him I was coming, right?”

I could hear him silently deciding whether or not to lie, before going with the truth. “Yes.” He peered up and saw the face I must have been making. He touched a finger to my chin. “Don’t blame yourself.”

I jumped up at that. “I don’t! I fucking blame Simon! I always knew he had to be a good guy or you wouldn’t have loved him…” My teeth hurt from gritting them through those last words. “… like you did. But he always tried to make you feel guilty for being friends with me, and that’s not fucking right!”

“But you’re the one here with me now,” Randy pointed out calmly, taking firm hold of my hand, even as it kept forming and unforming a fist in my anger. He pulled me back down and wrapped me in a hug. His chin dug deliciously into the groove between my shoulder and neck, and his hand rubbed circles on my back.

Damn. Shouldn’t I be the one comforting him?

“Simon… I’ll start sending him boxes of his stuff on Monday. I’m keeping the apartment. After we exhausted the fight, we ended pretty amicably, and we decided that.”

“That’s good. If you were homeless, I’d have to drag you kicking and screaming back to L.A. with me.” My laugh was a little awkward as we pulled back. Maybe because I wasn’t kidding, and I think he knew it.

“God, no,” he said, sticking his tongue quickly out at me. “Sweet thought, but… I, uh… started to say Kim wouldn’t like that any more than I would. I forgot… you said you broke up.” He scratched his head, his face darkening with sympathy. “I’m going to need some details now, please.”

“Details?”

“Well… only as much as I gave you, I suppose.”

“Which wasn’t much.” Good thing, too. What the fuck could I say. “Uh… was a few weeks ago, maybe a month. I ended it.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing. It just… wasn’t gonna go anywhere. She was starting to hint about marriage, and I… I just couldn’t give her that.”

“I thought you wanted to get married.”

“Hypothetically, yeah, I think so. But…” I let the thought trail off, distracted by that adorable crease in his forehead, between his brows, that shows up when he’s confused.

“Do you mean you didn’t love her?” he asked.

I thought about it, but just for a moment. “No, I did. But… something was just missing.”

The crease smoothed. “Like with Simon?”

“Yeah.”

We sat for a beat, my knee against his thigh… his fingers skimming my hair, righting a stray piece. I closed my eyes briefly, until he spoke.

“We are a couple of sad-assed lonelyhearts, aren’t we?”

“My ass isn’t sad,” I said, straight-faced. “It’s very happy to be here.”

“Yeah? Let me see.”

Randy pushed at my hip, and I laughingly raised up so he could see… and then, for good measure, smack my ass. I about bit through my lip to keep from asking if it felt happy, too.

“You’re crazy,” I told him.

“Ooh, Jocelyn would tear you up. She doesn’t like that word.”

“Who’s Jocelyn?”

He looked like he really hadn’t meant to mention this person. “Oh… Dr. Jocelyn Matthews. My, uh… therapist.”

No shit. “You have a therapist?”

“Yes, Gale. I know it’s not something you would do, but…”

“Actually…”

“No shit?”

No fair reading my mind. “Just recently.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to ask this, but… what do you talk about?”

Here it was. Fuck. Where the hell did I begin?


	3. Exceeding The Recommended Dosage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we left off, Randy asked Gale what he talks about in therapy. In this part... well, the conversation gets really interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

_Randy’s POV_

“I’m sorry, Gale. I shouldn’t be asking you that.”

“Since when have you held anything back with me?”

Um… aside from how I want you so bad my skin aches and my teeth itch when I just think of you? And now that you’re right next to me, I don’t know how I’m managing to form sentences or breathe in and out and not jump you? Never.

“I’m not holding back,” I said, then pointed to my watch. “It’s getting late. And I just realized you’ve been traveling all day and you’ve got to be exhausted.”

“I’m not fucking tired,” Gale declared, but the words turned into a yawn.

“I saw that.”

“That was just power of suggestion.”

“Then, how about this? I suggest we go to bed.”

I heard how that sounded just too late. Or maybe it was my hand on his arm that made it seem like an invitation. My wide eyes locked with his, and for a foolish second I wondered if he was thinking the same things I was. Then I brushed off the moment, like my hand from his arm, and the awkward electric charge that came with both. I purposely didn’t fumble out a _“you know what I mean,”_ so as to not make it a big deal.

Gale smiled softly, almost sadly. “Yeah, I guess I am tired. See you in the morning?”

“Yeah. We can do whatever you want to do.”

“Okay. G’night, Rand.” He gave my shoulder a pat and for some reason I wanted to cry.

“Goodnight, Gale.”

I watched him as he walked to his room and shut the door. I let out a long, slow breath, and followed the cats to my own room, knowing there was no way in hell I was going to fall asleep.

**********

I’d spent the last two hours lying awake and listening to Gale. Gale unzipping his duffel bag. Gale’s door opening. Gale padding across the hall to the bathroom. Light flicking on. Clothes hitting the floor. Gale turning on the water and getting into the shower.

My hand crept to my dick at the thought of Gale naked, Gale wet, Gale… _so close by_. But I forced it away. No jerking off with him here, I decided. Even though I’d probably never needed to jerk off more.

Thinking of jerking off made me think I hoped I’d remembered to put out a towel for him.

Then it was the sound of the water stopping and shower door opening and closing again. Gale moving around. What I believed to be the tiny hum of an electric razor, and I wondered if he was shaving. Flushing. Teeth brushing. Light flicking off. A deep sigh as he padded back to his room. Instead of the creak of weight on the bed, I heard small thumps and the rustle of pages.

I was content to listen to sounds of Gale until morning, but suddenly there was a very large thud, followed by an _“OW, sonofabitch,”_ and I got up and hurried down the hall. His door was only pulled to, so I knocked and pushed on it slightly.

“Gale, are you okay?”

“Yeah… Fuck,” he laughed, pained. “I’m fine.”

Opening the door all the way, I saw him leaning on a bookshelf, standing on one leg, holding his right foot in his hand. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I was reaching for this one book and it fell on me.”

“You need ice or something?”

“No, no, it’s really fine.” He planted his foot and stood straight. “Sorry I woke you.”

“It’s okay. I’m just happy you’re not a burglar.” Right. Like I didn’t know exactly whose soundtrack I’d been listening to all night. I admired his, as I‘d thought, clean-shaven face. “And you didn’t wake me,” I added. “You can’t sleep either?”

“Nah. I thought one of these was bound to do the trick.” He waved his hand at the roomful of books.

“Is this the one that wounded you?” I picked a large hardback up off the floor by Gale and quirked an eyebrow. “ _Psychology and Buddhism: From Individual to Global Community…_ You weren’t seriously going to read this, were you?”

“Well, it was either that or _Moonage Daydream: The Life & Times of Ziggy Stardust_, and I thought I might enjoy that too much.”

I smiled. He’d sent me that book, though with no accompanying phone call, and only a brief note, for my last birthday. “Yes, you would. You could have knocked on my door, you know.”

“Nah, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

I blinked, and stared, and waited for my ears to clear out. “You didn‘t…? Gale, what the fucking hell.”

“What?”

“Do you hear yourself? You didn’t want to disturb me? Since when have we ever been this goddamned polite?”

Gale opened his mouth but didn’t seem to have an answer.

“Well, I don’t like it!” I shouted. “Now, come here.” I climbed up on the foot of the bed and waited for him to join me. After a minute, he did, sitting up by the pillows.

Of course, around then I realized that I was both a bossy boots and an idiot. I had gotten myself into _bed_ with Gale. And we were in nightclothes. He looked so good. Top half, he wore a Brian-esque black wifebeater that showed off the muscle that defined his lean body. Bottom half was all Gale, these plaid flannel pajama pants, frayed around the ankles, that he still managed to make hot. I concentrated on not getting a hard-on and hoped I knew what I was doing.

“We can‘t sleep, so let‘s talk. Even if you don’t want to, now I’m pretty sure we need to. So… where did we leave off?”

“Therapy,” Gale said quietly.

“Right. Joking aside… are you okay? I mean, I have a hard time picturing you baring your soul to a therapist.”

“Yeah, Dr. Aberman has a hard time sometimes getting shit out of me, but I’m getting better at it.”

“Dr. Aberman?”

“Yeah. What?”

I narrowed my eyes, smirking. “First one in the phone book?”

He smiled at how well I knew him. “Yeah. Hell, A’s as good a letter as any.”

“What’s he… she… like?”

“ _He’s_ all right. Older guy. Think he’s married. He dresses like Dr. Huxtable, but he seems pretty serious. I’ve only seen him a few times. He’s good, though. He doesn’t shock easy.”

“You’ve been saying shocking things?”

“Maybe,” he hedged, eyes darting, then dancing with a secret. “What’s Dr. Matthews like?”

“She’s young, unique… _bi_.” Gale did a little double take, probably at the thought that she’d volunteered this information. “Yeah, she’s very proud of that. Encouraging… sometimes too much so. She talks all casual and friendly to you, and then she’ll try to make up for it by using big, doctorly words. She’s a fangirl, but she’s fun.”

“ _You_ are telling all your deepest, darkest secrets to a fangirl? You must really like her.”

“Yeah, she‘s cool. I couldn’t leave her now, anyway. She knows too much,” I laughed. “So… what made you look up head shrinkers in the yellow pages?”

“I, uh… did it right after I broke up with Kim.”

“That must have hit you harder than you let on,” I surmised.

Gale played with a loose string on the hem of his pants, really concentrating on it. “It wasn’t as much the breakup itself as… the _why_ it happened.”

“You said there was just something missing.”

“Yeah.” Now he was pulling at the string, and his teeth tugged at his bottom lip. He looked like something was weighing heavy on his mind.

I waited.

“The something missing was you, Rand.”

I couldn’t even have understood what he was really saying in that first instant. But the importance must have registered, because everything got sort of slow motion and hazy like I was underwater. My only thought was that, in all the hundreds of Gale dreams I’d had over the years, this was actually a new one. But then I looked around, and I pinched myself on the wrist, and I knew this was somehow reality.

“W-what?”

He finally looked up, looked into my eyes… and I think I died and came to life again in that same second.

“It’s _been_ you.”

**********

 _Gale’s POV_

I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Apparently, neither could he. Randy’s face gave almost nothing away, but I could feel his eyes trying to bore through mine and see what was inside my head.

“What are you talking about, Gale?”

“You. I’ve been talking about you to my doctor non-stop because I can’t fucking stop thinking about you.” Or, can’t stop thinking about fucking you. That, too.

“Oh.” Now he looked terrified. He was quiet for a full minute, but then he actually said, “Makes sense,” like I’d just told him smoking’s bad for your health. His voice was shaking, but he tried to pretend he understood what was going on and that everything was normal. “It’s just because we haven’t seen each other for so long, after five years of spending so much time together.”

“Then why was it the same back when we were still doing the show?”

“Because… we were together so much,” he scrambled. “How could you help but…”

“Rand, shut the fuck up.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing! I want you to hear what I’m trying to say!”

“Which is?”

“….I love you.”

I’d said the words to him before, more than once, but they meant something completely different now. Even the street noise fell silent when I said it. I listened to the catch of breath in his throat, caught the flutter of his eyelids, but then they were gone. I waited for him to hear my pounding heart, but he drowned it out with a head full of logic, as I‘d expected he would.

“I… I know… I love you, too.”

“No, Rand. More than that. I mean, I _want_ you.”

“No, you don’t. Please stop saying it.” He was starting to get angry, but I wasn’t going to let up.

“Don’t fucking tell me I don’t. Why do you think I would lie to you? Especially about this?”

“I don’t know!” He moved almost imperceptibly away from me, like half an inch. Pissed me off. “I don’t even know why you would lie to yourself about it.”

“I’m not,” I said… soft as steel, no room for debate.

“You’re saying you broke up with Kim… for me?”

“I did it because it was right for me, and it was better for her. I couldn’t love her like I should have because, damn it, you already took up all the space in my heart.”

God, that was corny. But it seemed to affect Randy. His face grew thoughtful, almost remorseful. Then he shifted to playful in an instant.

“You calling me fat?” We both laughed, like a shudder… small… uneasy. But a tiny bit of the tension broken.

Yeah, right. There wasn’t an ounce of fat to be found on the man. I had looked, many times. And looking at him then… in his snug white T-shirt and black silk pajama pants… I wanted to look again… _closer_.

“That’s sweet, Gale,” he continued. “But… you don’t love me like that.”

“Why do you think I don’t?”

His eyes pleaded with me to end this now, to save us both. But I _was_ saving us both… the only way I knew how.

“Do I even have to say it?”

“Yes, Randy. You have to say it.”

“You’re straight! Okay? There’s no getting around that!”

I shrugged, and I could feel how much it annoyed him. “Sure there is. You already have.”

Randy stood up, and I worried he was going to storm out, but he started pacing… holding his head in that way that makes me want to find him some aspirin, but usually just means he doesn’t know what to do with the information he has coming in.

“You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to me, Gale. I gave up. I can‘t hope again and then we don‘t talk anymore and you won‘t put your arm around me and I lose you. I can‘t go through that again.”

The rush of his words carried a familiar sting. “Are you talking about when you stopped speaking to me second year, I still don’t know why? Why bring that up now?”

“You told me about that guy blowing you in college, remember?”

“Yeah. What does that…?”

He stilled, speaking regretfully. “It was false hope I couldn’t afford. It made me want to think there was a chance when there wasn’t, and I got mad. Because you still weren’t gay and you still didn’t want me. I had to avoid you for a while.”

Fuck. That time had nearly killed me, missing him and not even knowing what I had done wrong. Now to find out I had almost lost Randy because of that stupid story? But… I’d almost lost him because he’d had feelings for me. He’d wanted me to want him. And I did, then and now. So why was this less than two feet of space between us filled with so damn many brick walls?

“I’m sorry I’m slow, Rand. I didn‘t…”

“Don’t force yourself to catch up, Gale. Look… I’m sorry for getting mad. You’ve got a lot going on, and everyone’s entitled to a little breakdown or a midlife crisis or whatever this is. But you knew yourself better than anybody I’ve ever known in my life. Don’t give that up now, especially based on anything as lame as a blow job from a hundred years ago, or the fact that when you had to kiss and pretend to fuck me all those times your balls didn’t automatically jump up into your body in disgust. Okay?”

I should have silenced his beautiful mouth with my own at some point during that nonsensical rant. But by the end I was trying too hard not to laugh.

“First of all, fuck you. I’m only 36, thank you, and that’s too young for a midlife crisis. Second, I know the most important stuff about myself. I know what I stand for and what pisses me off. I know how to tell good weed from bad by the smell and just how much it takes to get me as lightly or darkly toasted as I want. I know that on the days I look my worst there will always be a fan there with a camera. And I know that there’s no one I’d rather spend time with, talk to, look at, touch, or just fucking know exists in the world, than you.”

Hah. That shut him up.

“Third, my body’s reaction to yours was always more along the lines of me getting so hard that, no matter how loose-fitting the robe, the crew could tell by the way I was walking funny to my trailer. You _know_ that… Randy?”

**********

 _Randy’s POV_

Trust me, I remembered. But, by two years in, I had worked so hard to detach from my crush, I made myself dismiss and not explore such things. I could blame _anything_ on friction. His erections, my own, global warming. Besides, despite my conscious detachment, towards the end of the show… by which point I really should have been fucking immune… I was generally near hard before the director even yelled “Action!” So Gale got wood after he’d been rubbing up against me for an hour. Big deal.

“It still doesn’t mean anything,” I insisted.

“What doesn’t? On-set erections or college experimentation or my fucking _feelings_ for you? ‘Cause I think you add them up and…”

I chose the easiest of those topics to deal with. “So you got blown once. Lots of straight guys do. They close their eyes and figure a mouth’s a mouth. They’re wrong, but they think it. It’s not like you sucked the guy off or anything.”

“Uh, yeah… about that…”

“What?”

“If I tell you I _did_ , are you gonna stop talking to me again?”

“You…?” What was he trying to do to me? I watched him speak, watched his lips move and couldn’t help but imagine them wrapped tightly around some guy’s cock… Okay, mine.

“He did it to me,” he shrugged. “It only seemed right.”

Straight, gay, or all of the above, Gale was a Southern gentleman.

My face was hot. With anger, embarrassment, or pure lust… I‘m not sure. “Why didn’t you tell me that part of the story years ago?”

“I guess I was testing out your reaction?”

Which had been to shut him out for months. “Oh.”

“I didn’t even tell Dr. Aberman.”

“Because you didn’t want him to think you might actually be gay. You couldn’t even tell your doctor, Gale. So how can you expect me to accept you coming out if you can’t?”

Gale’s face kind of twisted up, like he knew what he said would be the wrong answer. “I don’t. I mean, that’s not really what I’m saying.”

“What isn’t?”

“I wouldn’t say I was gay.”

I’d only had one glass of wine, right? Had I maybe had more than the two tiny pulls I remembered taking off that joint, hours before? Had I hallucinated this conversation? He was in love with me and wanted me _so_ much, but he wasn’t gay. In Gale’s twisted head, that meant what? He wanted us to be together forever, maybe be roomies, but never fuck? That’s just great. Who did he think we were? Bert and Ernie?

“What _would_ you say?” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I halved the distance between us, grabbing his hand and holding it firmly against my silk-draped cock, half hard inside my pants. “No interest in that at all?”

Gale made this little sound that I keep playing on a continuous loop in my head. Deep and strangled with want. His fingers squeezed me gently, caressed with intent, as he looked openly into my eyes. I felt myself go beyond half hard. And fuck if I wasn’t the one to back down in my own game of chicken.

“Okay, you’re interested,” I said shakily, removing his hand and scooting back again. Leaving Gale looking bereft and me definitely feeling it. I crossed my arms over my chest. “How are you not gay?”

“I enjoy fucking women more than I’m pretty sure gay men are supposed to.”

I think the flicker of pain that crossed my face at that reminder was intended, to get me back for my little, uh, stunt. “Good for you. So… what? You’re bi?” I was attempting to look bored at this point, for some stupid, self-preserving reason.

Gale ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Why do we have to fucking label everything? It’s so limiting. Some people just defy categories.”

I was about to tell him to quit trying to be Bowie when I realized I’d heard that before… _Some people just defy categories._ Dr. Matthews had said it, speaking primarily about herself… (She hadn’t actually called herself ‘bisexual,’ but something like ‘an open-minded connoisseur of people’)… But, before long, she had applied it towards Gale as well. I got a sudden urge to call her.

“I’m generally attracted to women. I _can_ be attracted to men, but nothing you‘d write home about… I am _overwhelmingly_ attracted to you, Rand,” Gale clarified.

I think it was finally starting to hit me… how beautiful everything he was saying was and how amazing that he was saying it to me. That he really did want me that much. But I still had to try and break it down, force some sense out of it. Shit, what was wrong with me?

“So… you’re bi,” I stated this time.

“Maybe. Just sounds like a cop-out, though, doesn’t it? Or else, like I’m just a slut.”

That got me to smile again. “I don’t think you’re a slut… despite the rumors.”

He eased and laughed, then sobered. “Truth is, I guess I’ve always been more comfortable in _situations_ with other men than a straight guy should be… even before the show, but… nothing ever went beyond comfortable before. You know what I mean? I never really wanted, needed, to be with a man until you.”

“Oh… But does that mean… you never…?”

“In the world of men on men, it’s fuck or be fucked, and I’ve done neither,” Gale said, grinning… Goofball.

I found myself beyond relieved. I still didn’t know what was happening, but I knew the thought of him fucking another man hurt me too much to even be hot. Him with a woman had always been… distasteful… But a man? Like a dagger to my heart. One man was created to introduce Gale Harold to the joys of gay sex (real or faked), and his name was Randy Harrison.

**********

 _Gale’s POV_

“Is this why you came here? I mean, did you know you were going to tell me all this?” Randy asked.

He’d shifted a little closer to me by then, which made me happy. My hand reached between us, resting on his ankle, and he let it stay.

“I knew I needed to see you, wanted to talk to you. I didn’t have it planned out, no. I thought you were still with Simon, for one thing. I don’t know if that would have kept me quiet or not… What about you? Why did you invite me?”

Randy’s mouth scrunched up in amusement at what he was going to say before he said it. “I missed you and wanted to see you and Jocelyn told me to.”

“Your therapist told you to see me?” After I said it, I started laughing. I started laughing loud and full, for several minutes, because it was too damn funny. I think Randy was torn between being mad that I seemed to be making fun of him and pleased that the awkwardness in the air completely evaporated.

“What’s so funny about that?”

I leaned over to the floor beside the bed, reaching into my bag. I pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to him, wiping at my eyes, still grinning. “Mine wrote me a fucking prescription!”

He had those sexy little glasses he sometimes wears hanging on the neck of his shirt, and he looked so intelligently adorable and fuckable when he put them on and focused on the paper in his hand. I watched his lips move as he read and his eyes sparkle at the simple destined ridiculousness of it all.

“We should call them,” he said, looking up at me. “Get them on some kind of conference call and ask them what the fuck we do now.”

The humor finally exhausted, I leaned back heavily into the pillows, searching his eyes. “Do we really need them, Rand?”

My hand lightly brushed the top of his head, then slid into his hair. My fingers gripped, massaging his scalp. As I guided his head to my chest, he hesitated for just a moment before giving in and letting his body follow. He molded himself to my side, our legs overlapping as we stretched them out. I continued to play with his hair, examining it up close for the first time since seeing him again. I could tell that while it was not _Justin blond_ anymore, it wasn’t Randy’s natural light brownish shade either. It was some combination… a grown up golden.

“You gave in to how good you look blond, eh?” I murmured against the softness.

“Shut up,” he said, followed by, “You like it?”

“You’re beautiful. Even more than you always were.”

“And I’m not even naked.” He grinned with teasing, but I saw something more than teasing in his eyes.

I took his glasses in my thumb and forefinger and pulled them slowly off his face, taking an unobstructed view. I saw acceptance and desire and _need_ , and I finished our mutual thought.

“…. Yet.”

Randy responded by raising up and placing one hand on my chest, thumb stroking my sternum. His other hand cradled my cheek and chin, rubbing the smooth skin appreciatively, before finding my lips. The tip of his index finger outlined them slowly, then lightly dragged over the sensitive skin of my bottom lip, making my breath hitch and my dick jump, as he mumbled something about this not being a dream. I scored the pad of his fingertip with my teeth and slipped my hand under his shirt, along the heat of his back, to reassure us both of that.

I don’t know which one of us closed the distance. Maybe him, maybe me. I just know Randy’s mouth was on mine for the first time in a year, and _fuck it_ , I was home.


	4. Making a Breakthrough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we left off, the boys had just started getting smoochy, yay. In this part... uh... that continues... a lot :) The smut chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

_Randy’s POV_

I always imagined this. Years of fantasies, dreams, and even two-second flashes of _what if?_ when he would lean in too close to say goodnight at the end of a long day’s shooting… In all these, I always saw the two of us crashing together like ocean waves. Wrestling, groping like teenagers. Out of control, at long last, desperate rush to fucking. Not so much because that’s how I wished it, but maybe because I thought that’s how it had to be… or else Gale would have a chance to change his mind. But now… I had no worries of that. He fucking _loved_ me, and I knew we would be taking our time with each other.

Gale’s lips pushed and pulled at mine, nibbling and then sucking them into his mouth to soothe. His tongue, swirling the heat and the wet, made me dizzy, or else drunk. There had always been something vaguely alcoholic about Gale’s kisses, both in flavor and intoxication, even when he’d had nothing to drink. And now, even fighting through layers of cannabis and Crest, he still tasted like some sweet liquor to me.

Not that I’d ever truly experienced _Gale’s_ kisses until this moment. I’d tasted him through Justin, kissing Brian, and I knew how good that was. Gale and Randy had kissed each other countless times, sure, but always very platonic, and basically closed-mouth. Maybe one or two of those kisses had gone on… just a little too long… but never anything we couldn’t play off. But _this_ … oh my God… this was us and this was real and this was unfuckingbelievable. He licked the roof of my mouth and I grabbed a handful of his hair, making us both groan.

I don’t know at what point I ended up fully on top of him, but that position was not going to work. More like, it was working too damn well. We were both hard and knew it. Our thin layer of clothes did nothing to keep my erection from digging into his stomach or me from feeling the tip of him brushing against my sac. The temptation was strong to slide down… just so… and grind our cocks together until we both came in our pants. But then we really would be desperate teenagers, so instead I shifted, kneeling on the bed beside him.

Gale nearly whimpered at the loss. I quickly kissed his lips, then slowly his face… his cheeks, his jaw, nipped his chin lightly with my teeth. I pulled my shirt off over my head… his fingertips finding me and tickling a path down my bare skin at the first flash… and, happily, he leaned up so I could rid him of his shirt as well. Pushing him back down, I draped his beautiful torso with my naked chest, electrified at the contact and determined to claim every inch of Gale’s body as my own.

 _  
Gale’s POV_

Christ… I never would have said my nipples were a big pleasure point for me… maybe because I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman give them more than a cursory lick… but now, _fuck_ … I guess they are… I don’t know what Randy was doing to them… tonguing, tugging, licking, kissing, biting, breathing hot and cold… I swear, all at once… but it was fucking incredible.

I’d gotten glimpses of what this man could do to me for years, in scenes. But, whether long sequences mapped out for us, or the occasional, brief, improv’d bite or squeeze, they were just glimpses. As much as part of me had always been glad for any excuse to be that close to him, another part began to dread that closeness for the cruel tease that it was. I don’t think I took a _hot_ shower once in at least the last three years I lived in Toronto. But now there was no holding back. And I knew Randy… He would give me everything he had to give.

I slid my hand along his side and down and around to his ass. I sank my fingers in under the curve, but the damn silk pants, while soft and sexy, were also slippery and totally in my way. I started pushing them down over his hips. When he felt it, he stopped working on me to help out, taking off the pants and with them the briefs underneath… throwing me a little grin as I drank in the sight of him. God, I already knew, but he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

He wouldn’t let me touch him, though. Not until I was naked, too… or so said that wicked grin. I lifted my hips without him asking and his grin widened, hands tugging flannel down my legs and away from my body. He responded to my post-shower lack of underwear by laying alongside me, wrapping his hand around my rigid cock, and whispering against my lips.

“I thought so.”

“I, uh… forgot to pack any,” I kidded shakily, trying to control myself with Randy’s hand on me. He wasn’t even stroking. Just holding, firmly, like he never wanted to let go.

“Likely story. But it more than works for me.”

He kissed me, and as our mouths consumed each other again, my hand found his and gently persuaded it away from my dick. Before he could look at me, hurt or confused, I pushed him to his back.

“Now… I haven’t done this in… fuck, sixteen years…” I laughed mirthlessly at how old that made me.

Randy’s eyes grew wide and excited hearing my words… and watching me move down his body. “Gale, you don’t have to…”

“Fuck yeah, I do. I’m not missing this.” Didn’t he know how long I’d been waiting for this? I flattened myself on my stomach on the bed, my hands on his thighs. “I’m just saying… once… sixteen years… Keep that in mind.”

“You’re not being graded,” he giggled. “Shit, Gale. I’m about to come just from how hot you look right now with your mouth so close to my dick.”

I opened my mouth some and leaned closer, not actually making contact, but feeling the shiver that went through his body. “C’mon, Rand. Make me work for it a _little_.”

“I’ll try,” he murmured. God, his voice was sexy. “But I might have to close my eyes.”

“No, no… Don’t do that.” I kept my eyes on his until I saw a promise in them. Even though I was kind of nervous, I felt like it was important for him to watch.

My hands crawled from his legs to his hips, holding on, and I lowered my head, torturing him at first… laying small, wet kisses on his inner thighs, all hard muscle and soft, porcelain skin. I moved slowly upward, my face hovering, resting in the thatch of pubic hair… breathing in his scent, masculine and perfect. My nose nudged his cock, just barely, and I listened to Randy’s breathing change.

Dipping my head down to his balls, I licked them, lapped at them, and found I liked the weight on my tongue. Soon I was sucking them into my mouth, rolling them, as I stroked his hipbones with my thumbs. He was making these little gasps and starting to squirm quite a bit, which made me feel good, as I hadn’t really even touched his cock yet.

I couldn’t remember any specifics from my one time doing this to call on, so at first I’d tried to think of things I’d liked whenever I had been blown. But as soon as Randy’s beautiful dick was in my mouth, I stopped thinking and just started doing what felt good.

I looked up at him as my tongue snaked around the head, checking that he was still watching. His mouth was open, his lips red from biting them, his skin flushed, and blue eyes never bluer or more focused on me. It was hot as hell to feel that, feel him seeing me push into the slit, lick his pre-cum and demand more. Seeing me unable to resist him any longer, and taking the shaft into my mouth… maybe tentatively at first, but only because of his size, which was well more than his petite body would have you believe.

My lips sealed tight around him, I slid down, and up, and farther down. I tried to take him in as much as I could. He was so hot and strong and pulsing, so _Randy_ , against my tongue. I wanted to swallow him, but I knew I really didn’t have the skill. I felt his hand on my head, snagging my still damp hair… not so much guiding or asking for more as just needing something to hold on to. I got swept away in the sound of my name, falling from his mouth over and over, along with dirty words of encouragement… until I felt the tip of him bump the back of my throat. Involuntarily, I swallowed, and while not a true deep throat, the extra pressure was enough to finish Randy.

He tried to pull me back when he was about to come, but I only allowed it enough to keep from choking. If he thought I didn’t want him to come in my mouth, he was crazy. I kept going… sucking harder, flexing my cheeks… my hand lightly pressing his abdomen… until his hips bucked and he shot down my throat. His cry was deep and true, and I wrapped my arms around his backside and held him to me, drinking the warm, salty spurt, some spilling over my lips. Not embarrassed at all to have his cum on me, or of the fact that I was licking it up. I’d sampled my own before and not been impressed, but fuck if Randy wasn’t to be _craved_.

I watched him drifting slowly back to earth and loved him so entirely. His legs splayed open, one hand lazily rubbing his chest, eyelids heavy with satisfaction. So beautifully open. I’ve always admired that quality in him in life. He’s a private person, but something about his heart is completely laid bare, both with the people who are important to him and in his acting. I knew I was a lucky son of a bitch to experience him this way, too.

I felt an urgent tug on my hair then, Randy pulling me up to kiss me… and kiss me… and kiss me. I think he liked me tasting like him. His breathing was still a little labored.

“Fuck, Gale…”

 _  
Randy’s POV_

“If I’d known… Shit, I… That was…”

“A brain scrambler?” Gale laughed.

“To say the least… Oh my God…” He still had a dot of my cum on his chin. I kissed it away, holding my face to his, smelling how delicious my aftershave was on him mixed with my sex. “I’m a little jealous now, I think.”

“Jealous? Of…?”

“That guy. I don’t care if it was sixteen years ago. I can’t think about you doing what you just did to anyone but me.”

“Trust me, Rand. It wasn’t anything like _that_.”

“No?”

“Fuck no. I was a kid, didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk… and the guy was good-looking, I think, but I hardly knew him and it was a dare. It wasn’t something I’d been wanting and dreaming about doing for six years. Only you could have inspired that out of me.”

“Oh,” I whispered, still amazed.

“And I spit… you know, back then.”

I smiled shyly, then… less shyly… told him to lie on his stomach. He looked startled, like he didn’t know whether to be scared or not, not expecting (at least yet) whatever he thought I might do with him in that position. “Relax,” I whispered in his ear, scraping the tender lobe with my teeth. “I just want to give you a little massage.”

Well… at first.

Gale complied, and I straddled his back, my fingers sinking into the skin of his shoulders, loosening the muscles. I worked my way all around his neck, knowing it was probably a little bit tense from him sucking me off like that. He made contented hums of pleasure into the pillow as I kissed the spot where the base of his neck meets the spine, and as my hands made a long, massaging path down his body to his ass. I pushed at his thighs and he let me open them wider. Kneeling between his legs, I kneaded the fleshy cheeks, rubbing in outward circles that began to open them wider as well. I gave a lick just under the curve and received a subtle push back into my face, but still I wanted to make sure he was on board.

“You know what I’m about to do?”

“Mm hmm,” he responded simply, muffled, then raised his head to add a small, clear, “Please.”

Gale always had this way of stealing my breath with little moments.

I spread his ass cheeks with my thumbs, exposing the pink puckered hole. I blew on it, licked a wide stripe up Gale’s crack, and then blew again, delighting in his body’s shivers and shakes. He smelled like heat and sex and my shower scrub, and he tasted smoky and sweet and like the most addictive thing ever, just like I‘d thought. My hands played, running over soft skin, as my tongue swept through him furiously, downy hairs tickling my tastebuds. I chewed on the sensitive flesh, as close to inside him as I could get, made hungrier by his moans.

“Randy… Randy… fuck, _Randy_ …”

At that, I pressed the tip of my tongue to his hole, now shiny with my spit and twitching with anticipation. I wiggled it a bit, but soon just couldn’t wait and pushed my way inside. The sweet clenching of his hot, wet ass around my hot, wet tongue was a thousand wet dreams come true.  I tried to soothe his thrashing by rubbing his lower back, even as I incited him further by continuing to tongue-fuck him.

I was ready to move with him, expecting him to shift more onto his knees, allowing him better access to his dick and more room to jack off. But I was surprised to realize he wasn’t even touching himself. I tried to give his balls some attention while I ate his ass, and he awkwardly twisted himself out of my reach. Stopping long enough to look up, I saw Gale was now biting the pillow, pleasure mixed with concentration on his face, and he looked like he was fighting like hell to keep from fucking the mattress.

“Baby…?”

I don’t know why I called him that then, for the first time, but it just kind of came out. I liked saying it.

“Why are you trying not to come? Just so you know, I don’t give a fuck about these sheets.”

 _  
Gale’s POV_

He’s so cute. I would have laughed at the sheets comment, if I wasn’t so completely on fire and about to explode.

Oh God, and he called me _baby_. I loved that so much, but it really didn’t help the whole not exploding thing.

“I just… want to wait… When I come, I want to be inside you.”

I’m not sure when or why I decided that. I know Randy would have no trouble getting me hard again if I came now. And yes, I knew technically I’d be coming inside the condom. But all I could think about was being inside Randy, and when my orgasm hit, I wanted to be wrapped in him and looking into his eyes and giving him everything of me. So, I would fucking hold out until then.

Unless the rim job was him preparing me to be fucked first, because I really didn’t think I’d fight that very hard at all.

But Randy gave one last kiss to my ass and said simply, “Okay.” I think I saw him blink back a… hopefully happy… tear.

He started to get up to go get _supplies_ … which made me fairly confident, in their absence from the guest room, that he and the not-to-be-mentioned-again-EX never had sex in here… but I put a hand on his arm, reaching for my bag and pulling out condoms and lube from amongst the contents. He made a shocked face.

“You knew you’d get lucky?”

“No. But I was a Boy Scout, you know. Be prepared.”

He kissed me, amused, and - I think - proud. Then he tore open a condom wrapper and began to sheathe me. Fuck, that was hot. I had to talk through it to distract myself.

“So what was the verdict?”

“Of what?”

“Rimming… What do I taste like?”

“Besides heaven?” Randy smiled, calmly opening the lube. “Hmm… Definitely paprika.”

“Paprika?” What the hell?

“Yup. Or maybe oregano.” He couldn’t stifle a giggle. “No, I know! Mrs. Dash!”

Getting me back for the _cumin_ comment. Good one, Rand. “Haha. Fuck you,” I said, pinching his nipple.

“Ahhh… Don’t tease me, Gale. Do it.” He lay back, inviting me into him.

 _  
Randy’s POV_

I’d had different versions of this fantasy… pictured it in all possible ways. But I was surprised by the reality that, being a usual top, the one experience I craved even more than fucking Gale was to be fucked by him. Having him inside me. Brian and Justin had left us with a lot of half-formed sense memories… possibilities explored to the edge but never over. So many times I’d felt Gale’s cock (sock-covered, but still) nudging the crack of my ass with no hope of going further. Now, with no yell of “Cut!” and no barriers, cloth or otherwise, I wanted that experience all the way.

I pulled my knees in to my chest and gave Gale… though it sounds ridiculous considering our nakedness and what we’d already been doing… my best _flirty_ look. “Wanna stretch me?”

“Oh, I plan to.” He gave his naughtiest look back.

“I meant my legs.”

He laughed and grasped my ankle, gently pushing it up towards the ceiling, straightening my leg as much as it would allow… then doing the same for the other.

“I missed this,” he said.

I used to ask him to do this for me before our love scenes, to keep my legs from cramping up, but only maybe first year of the show. I couldn’t handle it anymore after that.

“Me, too. But it got to a point where… it just wasn’t a good idea.”

“For either of us,” he agreed, rubbing the backs of my thighs with the heels of his hands while I lubed us both.

“Shame. I’m not very flexible anymore. Now that I’m getting old.”

“You fucker. You’re 28.”

“Well, when I was 23, I could get my feet behind my head.”

“Shit…” Gale was starting to look seriously pained. “How about you just try for behind _my_ head? Shoulders, waist, I don’t care. I need to fuck you _now_ , Rand.”

Immediately, I opened my legs and made room for him as he positioned himself over me, hooking my ankles around his waist to start. I gripped his shoulders from underneath, tilting my pelvis up until I could feel Gale’s cock cradled in my ass, dripping lube. Then he was there, at my entrance, pushing slowly past the resistant, then welcoming, muscle. Opening me up and giving himself to me. I had always wondered what color his eyes would be at this moment… Mmm, green wins… Green and love.

 _  
Gale’s POV_

Holy fuck… How the hell was I going to hold on?

Pushing inside Randy was the most exquisite brink of insanity I’ve ever known. Slowly forcing my way in. Begging his body for permission. A slight give, relaxing of tissue, but not enough. His throaty whispers demanding more, deeper. His hips angling to help me get there. Legs moving over my shoulders. Feeling the lube doing its job, as I slid beyond the first ring, then the second. Randy helping again as his muscles pushed against me for a moment, then pulled me farther inside. His ass so tight around my cock, squeezing like nothing I’d ever felt.

I pulled out reluctantly and tried a more forceful thrust, burying myself completely. Randy and I both cried out, and I sank my forehead against his.

“You okay?” I panted.

“Yeah… I can’t believe we’re here.”

“I know… I know… Fuck.”

“And it’s just, um… been a while… since I’ve done this.”

It took me a minute to get what he meant. He hadn’t bottomed in… possibly years. From what I’d gathered of his relationship with what’s-his-face, it had been dependable and reliable (like a Volvo), and they hadn’t switched it up much. If Randy was the top, he’d probably always been.

I looked down at him, under me… arms and legs wrapped around me… my dick inside him… and I knew again that I was a lucky son of a bitch. I licked droplets of sweat from his upper lip and rolled my hips, trying to sink in further and touch every part of Randy he was offering me.

Something about the taste of his sweat on my tongue… or maybe it was the total abandon on his face… gave me this unbelievable surge of need and freedom. I dug my fingers into his hips and started fucking him harder, faster… with six years’ worth of fucking my own hand, in the absence of Randy in my bed, pushing me along.

 _  
Randy’s POV_

Oh God. I was already feeling so… good, so fucking _full_ … Gale’s big, beautiful cock in my ass… It had been so long, there was some pain, but it was so overwhelmed by the _finally_ … And then he sped up his rhythm and started slamming into me… My legs kept falling from the force of it, so I gave up and locked them around his waist again… I think all I managed to vocalize was one “ _Fuck_ ” and some gurgling sounds… Shit, I love him.

I would have kept every bit of his body pressed against mine if I could, but he needed better leverage. He kissed me before pulling back into a kneeling position, suddenly able to thrust with much more power… _Ohhhh fuck._

My hand wasn’t even on my dick. I was so gone, I didn’t even think about it, which sounds crazy. But Gale’s hand found my dick and stroked… firm and fast, fast enough to keep time with his fucking. My hand joined his, sometimes jacking the base while he did the head, sometimes just stroking his hand, but fuck… it was all good.

 _So_ good… watching Gale, so beautiful… sweaty, tan… fucking me, so deep… feeling… everything… God I needed to come… But I wanted to see Gale come… and I didn’t want to miss it.

I reached around his ass and crept my hand in, finding his hole still moistened, either with sweat or my saliva. Not to waste it, I worked a couple of fingers into him and kept them moving.

  
 _Gale’s POV_

Fuck, I knew what he was doing… and it was almost over as soon as his fingers plunged into my ass… Made me lose my jack of thought on Randy’s dick, that’s for damn sure… Even made me pitch forward, landing on my elbows… But my body was still driving into his… My balls slapping his skin… Building, building… I needed to come like nothing I’d ever needed in life, fuck air or water… but not until he did.

“You got to come with me, baby,” I whispered, or maybe growled.

And I kissed him, very gentle, just holding the contact… a contrast to our lower bodies’ frantic search for release. And I don’t know if it was my words or the kiss or that I think I finally figured out when I was brushing his prostate, but he came.

Randy came with a shout… that perfect ass spasming around my cock… clenching and unclenching… hotter and tighter and better than anything’s ever been… and he dug his heels into my ass… and he pulled hard on my hair… and he bit his lip and I rescued it with a kiss… and I watched the pleasure thrum through him and felt it all through me… felt ropes of his white heat hitting our chests… and I came the hardest I can ever remember… felt my cock erupt and found it hard to believe a condom could hold it all.

  
 _Randy’s POV_

The pleasure was blinding but I could still see Gale. His body bowing, breaking, all over me, as it hit him. His beauty during an acted orgasm could not compare to this. His ragged moans, breaths, turned shouts that rivaled mine. His body continuing to rock against me, slower and slower. Collapsing on top of me, still embedded, his face in my neck. Our hands grabbing on to each other’s, lacing fingers, as Gale made this sort of half-cry, half-laugh… like _Oh my God, I just can’t fucking believe it._

I know, baby, I know.

I didn’t realize time hadn’t stopped for good until he had to slip out of me. It would have made me sadder if I hadn’t known in my heart he’d be back. He sat up to remove the condom and tie it off, tossing it impressively into the wastebasket across the room. Then he lay back down and held me tighter than ever for I don‘t know how long.

  
 _Gale’s POV_

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Mmm,” Randy hummed. “Like I want to fuck you in my shower… a shower with no cameras peering through the glass.”

Not exactly what I meant, but I guessed that meant he was feeling as amazing as I was. “Sounds good to me. I already got off in that shower once tonight, and I’ll do better if you’re with me.”

“You jacked off in the shower?”

“I had to. Being so close to you all night… I was getting ideas.”

“God, so was I. But I managed to restrain myself _somehow_.” He looked up from where his head lay on my shoulder. “Shit, if I’d known what you were doing in there, my hand would have been a blur on my dick.”

“Mine was, thinking about you.”

“How did I not hear that? I laid awake for hours, just listening to every move you made.”

“Before I came, I stuffed your loofah in my mouth.”

I burst out laughing at his pseudo disgusted face and his ludicrous mutterings about that being “ _too intimate_ ”… hushing him up with true intimacy as I kissed the skin where his heart beats against his throat.

“Is that something you do a lot?” Randy asked quietly. “In the shower or out? While thinking of me?”

“Yeah.”

“Imagining something like… what we just did?”

“Yeah… about a million times.”

“No wonder you were so good… Me, too.”

“Fuck, I even… Nevermind.”

“What? You can’t have any secrets from me now.”

His eyes beam truth rays when he looks at you a certain way, I swear.

“Okay, I‘ve, uh… watched my fair share of gay porn. Mostly starting when the show started. Even though it wasn’t something _Brian_ needed to do, I could tell myself it was a Method actor thing… research of techniques, positions, some shit. Anyway, some did it for me, some really didn’t. But I found this one that I kept watching over and over. I realized it was because the two guys… kind of looked like us.”

I don’t know why I expected Randy to be shocked or freaked out or anything close to that. His eyes lit up and he said simply…

“ _Balls to the Wall Volume One_.”

I just fucking love him. “Yes!”

“Oh, I know!” he gushed. “I love those guys. I mean, the dark one’s not as gorgeous as you, of course. And the blond one’s ass is even whiter than mine… When he was naked, I could have sworn he still had underwear on. But they’re totally hot, and there’s a lot of ugly guys in porn, which is a shame. They did remind me of us. Moved together _almost_ as well. And not only were they hot _and_ hung, but they were really… sweet with each other, you know? Kind of beautiful. I’d almost think they were in love.”

When he finished going on about the porn dudes, I took his face in my hand, squishing his cheeks together. His mouth stuck out in a pout, which I kissed.

“I love _you_ , Rand.” So much my heart fucking hurt. “Do you believe me yet?”

“Yes, Gale, I believe you. I love you too much not to.”

Thank fucking _God_.

“So was it worth it?” I indicated us, lying there naked, in sticky sheets… surrounded oddly by books… his hair sticking out in all sorts of cute as hell directions. “Six years of wait?”

“Not to mention thousands of dollars worth of therapy? To quote the man I love… ‘ _Fuck yeah_.’”

And Randy smiled the smile it had nearly killed me to go a year without, and I promised myself not to go without it again.

“Now… it’s 4:30 in the morning… Let’s watch _Balls to the Wall_ and take a shower.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "baby" still surprises me, but... in this fic, G/R, *during sex* (lol)... it felt right.
> 
> This was my first time writing m/m lovin', and I thought it might be the only time, so I tried to give it all I had! lol
> 
> Oh, and yes, there were guys like that in that porn ;)


	5. Progress Report (Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explains what happens after the lovin'. Ridiculously happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

_Gale’s POV_

I stayed for about a week. Waking up with Randy every morning. Being extra touristy just to embarrass Randy out in the city every day. Sleeping with Randy… in our bed, the former “guest” bed… every night.

Plus, we fucked _a lot_.

When I did fly back, there was no weepy goodbye scene at the airport… because he went with me. He spent the tiny window of time he had between plays, _suffering_ Los Angeles, to help me pack my shit, so that I could move to New York and in with him. We didn’t discuss it much. I guess we just knew that’s how it had to be…

_“Gale?”_

_“Hmm?”_

_“You should stay here… Maybe forever?”_

_“I’d like that.”_

Randy organized everything much better than I ever could or would have. He was excited to see what of mine would fit in his… _our_ apartment, as Simon’s stuff was now history and there was extra space. One thing we decided was to move our bed into the master bedroom and buy a new bed for the guest room. Randy’s old bed and mine? I said we should burn ‘em, like the cocksocks, but I think he donated them to Goodwill or something. He’s a good guy like that.

We also paid a visit to Dr. Aberman while we were in LA. I felt a little sad to be leaving him. I’d never been that into the idea of therapy, but after all, he did bring Randy and me together… which Rand hugged him thanks for, several times. The doc told me we could continue appointments over the phone, but he also pointed out that I probably didn’t need them anymore… at least not for the same reasons. My arm around Randy’s waist, I returned Dr. Aberman’s smile with one twice as big and thanked him again.

Now, my agent… She was flipping out. I know Randy would have told me to drop her in a second if he’d heard the way she was badmouthing Broadway. She can be shortsighted, but she’s been with me for years. She wanted me to take that series, but… though part of me still can’t believe I turned down a lead… unless they wanted to move production to New York, I was not going to be available. No constant flying, weekends or less relationship was going to cut it for me after all the time we’d wasted. Randy felt bad at first that I was missing an opportunity for him, but then he decided the show sounded like it was doomed for early cancellation, anyway.

He encouraged me to rediscover my love of theater and join him on The Great White Way. Not in the same show, although that would have been fucking awesome. Sucks that the roles in _Love Letters_ are gender specific, because I think Rand and me would break hearts and kick ass. Oh well. I went back to the stage, and it was thrilling, and a learning experience, and blah blah blah… But why the hell did I pick _that_ play?

_“I suck in this, Rand.”_

_“No, you don’t, baby. It’s not your best role. And blond is definitely not your best color. But it’s the play itself that sucks.”_

_“I thought you loved Tennessee Williams.”_

_“Glass Menagerie, yeah. But, Suddenly Last Summer… it’s so weird. It’s got a title off some frothy paperback romance you read at the beach, and then it’s about lobotomies and cannibalism.”_

_“Now you tell me.”_

My role being, of all things, a psychiatrist, I had a phone session with Dr. Aberman just to try and gain some insight into the character. Not that Dr. A’s ever cut into anybody brain, but I digress. After he read the reviews, he promised me my money back for that hour.

 _Sigh…_ Okay, I got sidetracked there. Back to my agent, still flipping out. What really set her on tilt was discovering the reason for my move… my new and improved relationship with my old acting partner. She said she was torn between thinking it was the best thing or the worst thing ever for my career. She ended up deciding it was the best thing if I wanted to have a career that consisted only of squeezing every last drop out of _QAF_ publicity, and the worst if I wanted to ever actually do anything else.

True, Rand and I could go to DVD signings and make out and the fans would be happy as pigs in slop, but it was never going to happen. Private person plus private person, no matter how proud of their relationship, equals super private couple. And neither of us looked forward to dealing with the press under any circumstances, so the thought of them hounding us about the affair we’d obviously been having secretly for years… cheating on our respective significant others… me cowering in the fucking closet… was not a happy one. But we just went about our life together. We’re not big stars, so it took a month or so for anybody to start taking our picture or writing about it.

The thing is, the press didn’t crucify me for being gay all along and lying about it, or accuse us of the long-term affair. Instead, they actually compared me and Randy to Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres, of all fucking things… and considering how that worked out, I was _pissed_. They said my career was in a slump, I was “going gay” for publicity, and once I got a part I’d be back to straight. Nobody bothered to find out about the part I turned down to fucking be with Randy. No, don’t bother yourself with the facts or anything.

Randy, brilliant actor that he is, pretended what they were saying didn’t bother him, but I knew better. That’s what made me decide that, damn my pride or even my principles, I had to answer back. So, I made my _statement_.

_  
Randy’s POV_

We told our therapists first - that was just a given. Dr. Aberman was a sweetheart. He refused to take any credit, but he said he was very happy for us. Jocelyn was… beyond happy, especially because I brought Gale with me for my session. Something about actually seeing the two of us together, in person, was too much for her, and the fangirl kind of broke loose. She amused Gale more than frightened him, though, and much like Brian and Daphne, they became fast friends. We refused to answer most of her questions about our sex life, but based on our acknowledgment that Gale and I pretty much evenly take turns who’s top or bottom, the two of them did coin a new term… _“ambisextrous.”_ (I suggested “ambidickstrous” but was outvoted.)

I wrote Simon a letter I included with the boxes of his stuff I sent him, both thanking him for loving me and letting him know Gale and I were together. Gale did something similar for Kim. We knew they’d be hurt… not to mention, Simon would feel justified in every accusation he’d ever made… but they deserved to hear it from us.

And let’s just say we told selective family members. My mom screamed like a lottery winner at first. As it sank in, she was shocked and a little sad, as I hadn’t even told her about breaking up with Simon yet, and she had quite liked him. But then she was back to excited, insisting I put Gale on the phone and claiming she had known it would happen someday.

Now, the cast… We probably should have given them advance notice, but we did not. I think Gale assumed, since we email, that I would tell Peter… and then Peter would tell everybody else. But maybe I wasn’t ready to share us with all of them yet, because I didn’t, and therefore Peter didn’t. So, our phone didn’t start ringing off the hook until after Gale’s interview came out… Actually, I‘m not sure you can even call it an interview. Mind you, he’d told me vaguely what he was doing but nothing he had said. So color me as surprised as the rest of the world when I read Gale’s _statement_.

_“I don’t think people should have to force their identities to fit in little boxes just to make things easier for others to handle… and I still don’t think my personal life is anyone’s business but mine and one other person’s… But let me offer just this response to what the press has been saying. Yes, I have spent the majority of my sexual life involved with women, beautiful women, and that was never a lie. But my number one truth is that I will spend the rest of my life loving a beautiful man named Randy Harrison. Sorry to bust up everybody’s little theories, but that is as real as it gets and it’s not going away. Hell, I’d fucking marry him if he’d let me. So, I guess if that makes me gay, then I am damn proud of it. -- Gale Harold”_

Sharon saw it first and apparently called Hal… who then sent out a group email to the whole cast with a link to the article at the magazine’s website… and a fake-fuck still of us from the show with the caption, “Who didn’t see this _**coming**_?” Gee, thanks, Hal. He sent another immediately after, though, that just said, “Seriously, I’m so happy for you guys. Everything seems a little more right with the world now.” Which was the general consensus when the others joined in.

When I read the article, I was very glad my mom had said she would buy 50 copies, because I was afraid I might throw up on mine. Gale had gone to get dinner, purposely leaving me alone to read it. When he returned, I hugged him, kissed him, told him “Well done.” I didn’t mention the _M_ word, because obviously he’d just said that to make a point. But then, this happened…

_“What’d you get? Ooh, Chinese.”_

_“So… would you let me?”_

_“Let you what?”_

_“Marry you.”_

_“…… In the article… that was a proposal?”_

_“No, but this is.”_

_“Oh my God.”_

_“Maybe we don’t need it. But I want it. And I love you.”_

_“I… love you…”_

_“Then fucking marry me, Rand…… What are you doing?”_

_“Getting my fortune cookie.”_

_“You’re not supposed to open those yet.”_

_“Sorry. I thought you wanted your answer now, but…”_

_“Okay, okay… What does it say?”_

_“‘You will go on a journey, happy long time.’”_

_“No shit? I’ve been waiting for that fortune.”_

_“I know. See for yourself.”_

_“What do you think it means?”_

_“Well… what’s the ultimate journey if not marriage? So… I think it means… I do.”_

_“You do?”_

_“I do. Happy long time, baby.”_

_“Fuck yeah! C’mere…” (much kissing)_

_“So… you think because you’re proposing to a man you don’t have to spring for a ring? What’s up with that, Gale?”_

_“You opened my fortune cookie, asshole. Try the other one.”_

_“What are you-?…… Oh my God.”_

 

  
Therapy totally pays off. Trust me.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "You will go on a journey, happy long time" fortune was borrowed from an episode of NewsRadio.


	6. Porn Boys (sequel ficlet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only 480 words. Dialogue-only. My post-Therapy Boys G/R discussing the porn versions of themselves, lol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I made this up.

  


Porn Boys  
(a tiny dialogue-only "sequel" ficlet to Therapy Boys)  
by AHS  
 

"Gale, I’m home."

"Rand, come look at this."

"You’re watching porn without me? Ooh, I will have to punish you for that."

"I’m not in the mood."

"Says the guy watching porn."

"I’m not watching this crap. Look at it!"

"What? I’ve seen better. Definitely seen worse, though."

"Look who’s in it! Right there!"

"Oh, yeah! The blond from _Balls to the Wall_. I should have recognized his white ass. So?"

"So? So… he was good with the dark-haired guy. He didn’t need to do any more."

"Gale, he’s a porn star. I’m sure he’s done dozens of these, if not hundreds. Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before, or at least some other one he was in."

"And you didn’t tell me about it?"

"Uh, no. Why the fuck would I? I know you loved those guys together, me too, but they’re just… ‘actors.’ I’m sure the dark-haired one’s done a zillion of these."

"He has not!"

"Whoa. Baby, you need to calm down. I know we both said those guys reminded us of us, but they’re not us."

"I know that."

"I hope so… Besides, look, he’s not putting any feeling into this one at all. Just phoning it in."

"I guess… You wanna go to bed?"

"In a minute. Think I’ll watch this for a while."

"Oh, fuck you very much. Goodnight."

"Gale, I was kidding!… Look, I’m turning it off… Gale, I don’t know how you stayed straight for so long, because you are a bigger queen than I am! Me! Her Royal Highness, Randy Harrison! Do you know how sad that is?"

"…… Pretty damn sad."

"Come here."

"Sorry, Rand. I’m not crazy and I’m not a fucking idiot. I’m not seriously romanticizing porn. But you agreed those guys were different, how they were with each other. I guess they did come to represent us a little in my head. I know they’re not, but I still don’t want to see them fucking anybody else. Especially the blond one."

"I can understand that. Honestly, I think I reacted the same way you did. But we weren’t together yet, so I felt especially pathetic for dreaming that when White Ass was done with however many random guys, he went home to TallDark&Yummy."

"Who knows? Maybe years went by after they… _worked together_ … but then they found each other again."

"And professed their love."

"And, off-camera… fucked like big gay bunnies."

"Shut up." *laughter*

"Does that mean you’re not in the mood?"

"Please. I’ve been waiting for you to _fuck me very much goodnight_."

"I can do that." *kissing*

"Now, you’re not going to take it out on _me_ , are you? Porn Randy cheating on Porn Gale?"

"Mm, only if you want me to."

"Love you."

"Love you, too."

  



End file.
